DESCRIPTION: (Applicant's Description) While hospice and palliative care is quickly developing as a distinct clinical discipline with its own philosophy and informational base, this base falls far beyond the scope of basic training that health care professionals currently receive in their associate, bachelor, master and even doctoral level programs. In fact, in 1992, extensive research and a survey of American hospice programs revealed that there is no comprehensive curriculum, manual or book available specific to the practice of hospice. The objective of The Hospice Institute Certification Program is to develop an interdisciplinary training program in palliative and hospice care that can be duplicated throughout the country. The Certification Program will provide health care professionals - specifically nurses,psychosocial counselors and chaplains - with the knowledge and clinical skills they need to then implement this training program in their own hospice facilities. The Hospice Institute of the Florida Suncoast will accomplish this by providing the curriculum, workbooks, training manuals, teaching aides, preceptor/mentor skills and clinical competencies needed for the certified hospice care trainers to actively and comprehensively provide palliative and hospice care to terminally ill patients in their own communities.This project's first year will be spent developing curriculum with related teaching materials, and clinical competencies for all disciplines, while the second and third years will involve the actual "Train the Trainer"certification process. The development of an interdisciplinary hospice core curriculum will include those topics and issues which are universal for providing hospice care in all settings, followed by discipline-specific curriculum as well as clinical competencies for each discipline.Since education evaluation differs from scientific research evaluation, this project's evaluation process will be both summative and formative. Formative evaluation will include: Questionnaires and surveys completed by the participants, instructors and monitor during the implementation of the program; evaluation by objectives for each teaching session and interviews between participants and the Principal Investigator for individual feedback and evaluation. Summative evaluation will include: Overall questionnaires completed by the participants, instructors, class monitors and preceptors working with participants; a grouping of evaluations by objectives with a review of the results followed by completion of program competencies. Additionally, ongoing observational evaluation will be performed by the principal investigator and curriculum specialist to assure that the goals and objectives of the program are being met.